What Do You Know About America's Constitution? (Part I)

Any encyclopedia,or search on the worldwide Web, can bring up pages of details on America's "Constitution." All Americans would do well to read and study such information, for the Constitution is the most basic set of civil laws Americans are to live by. It defines all other civil laws in the sense that every other body of law in America is considered constitutional or unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court's interpretation of America's Constitution.

At the time of its signing on September 17, 1787, one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention was confronted by a question as to why so many basic human rights were not included in the Constitution. Although many of those basic rights were later added as amendments to the Constitution, the delegate's reply was that "The greatest danger to a democracy would be to have too many laws!"

Today America's law books on the nation's laws fill whole libraries. Every year it seems that more laws are added, while few laws are abandoned, ignored, or overturned as unconstitutional.

In all of these years, and in all of these laws and changes to the laws, the Constitution survives as the keystone of America's judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government. and sets forth the basic qualities and functions of those branches. Without the Constitution and its provisions, America as we know it would never have existed for what is now more than two centuries.

The American Constitution, while signed in mid-September of 1787, was not in its present form until May of 1992! The reason is really quite simple, the Constitution contains its own provisions for being changed when there is sufficient agreement that a change is needed.

Here is a short quiz to test yourself on some basic provisions of the American Constitution: [See Part II of "What Do Your Know About America's Constitution?" for answers and a continuation of this examination of the Constitution.]